AnnualCreditReport.com

Note: This post has been updated. We have added our tips for immediate steps victims (or potential victims) of the Equifax data breach can take. In this updated version of our tips, we have added information for individuals in the UK who want to check and see if they have been affected by the breach,

Financial privacy — U.S. consumers have the right to order one free credit report per year from each of the three national credit bureaus. The World Privacy Forum’s landing page about federally-mandated free Annual Credit Reports and the consumer tips for ordering a free annual credit report have been fully updated.

The simplest way of accessing your free credit report is to either call or to mail for the report. Please see the tips below for more information about these ways of accessing your credit report. However, if you do decide to retrieve your free credit report via the Internet at the official www.annualcreditreport.com site, please make sure you go to the correct site. You do not have to pay to receive your free annual credit report. If you are on a site that is asking you to pay for your credit report, double check the spelling of the site, or use the call-in and mail-in methods.

Landing page for Call Don’t Click: Why it’s smarter to order your federally mandated free credit reports via telephone, not the Interent. A report on www.annualcreditreport.com by the World Privacy Forum.

The Federal Trade Commission has taken action on the hundreds of imposter domains the World Privacy Forum uncovered and discussed in its Call Don’t Click I and II reports. Announcing the FTC action, Bureau Chief Lydia Parnes said: “Consumers also need to be alert about impostor sites – sites that misspell annualcreditreport.com or use sound

This new WPF report finds that medical identity theft is still a crime that causes great harms to its victims, and that it is growing overall in the United States; however, there’s a catch. The national consumer complaint data suggests that the crime is growing at different rates in different states and regions of the US, creating medical identity theft “hotspots.” These hotspots are important for patients, policymakers, and healthcare stakeholders to know about so as to address potential risks.

WPF has conducted original research on India's Aadhaar, a national biometric ID system, including field research in India during 2010-2014. WPF has published the original research in a peer-reviewed journal, Nature-Springer, and in Harvard-based Journal of Technology Science. The research found that systemic challenges to data protection and privacy exist in the Aadhaar system, challenges which do have potential remedies. Key lessons can be learned for both the US and the EU as biometric systems grow in popularity.